Category: philosophy

Addiction solutions are big business. Make that BIG Business. From Big Pharma to recovery clinics to psychiatry, from religions to self-help to metaphysics. Enormous industries have been built up to solve this always-escalating crisis of addiction.

But undeniably the biggest and most well-known solution to addiction are The 12-Step Programs, used by Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and a long list of other recovery programs. Anyone who has ever looked into addiction recovery has come first across a 12-step ‘solution.’

In fact, they are so ubiquitous it’s hard to find anything else. The 12-step programs have not only dominated the market for coming up on a century, the 12-step program created the recovery market, thanks to Bill Wilson and the Oxford Group.

According to the Oxford Group’s 12-Step website, Bill Wilson, Frank Buchman, and Mary Baker Eddy created the foundations for the 12-Step Program.

As fate and the WWW would have it, I know a thing or two about Mary Baker Eddy.

Her “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” was selected as one of the “75 Books By Women Whose Words Have Changed The World,” by the Women’s National Book Association and in 1995 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was also the Founder and President of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in the later years of her life.

She is considered a major founding figure in the Human Potential Movement, also called the “New Thought” faiths, the precursors of the New Age Movement, of Unity Church, that is of Oprah and The Secret fame.

Many volumes of her work are praised by religious thinkers worldwide and her Christian Science Monitor has won 7 Pulitzer Prizes and Christian Science Reading Rooms have been established around the world, all attesting to her remarkable influence during her lifetime until today.

My own family, on my mother’s side, are Christian Scientists and I attended their church as a child. What I most remember are the large block letters on the wall behind the pulpit that said “God is Love”.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson on ‘Religious Science’: “The emphasis is on positive thinking, influence of circumstances through mental processes, recognition of a creative energy source and natural law (referred to as God, First Principle, Universal Intelligence, and other terms) that manifests as the physical universe, and the rejection of a good/evil duality.”

I have a copy of her most famous text where the seal on the cover reads: “Heal the Sick. Raise the Dead. Cast out Demons. Cleanse the Lepers” in fine print around a symbol of a cross and crown.

Eddy was born of an elite New Hampshire family, married 3 times, first to George Washington Glover, a well-known Mason. Christian Science and Freemasonry have maintained a symbiotic relationship to this day. Her first school of Christian Science “Mind Healing” was started in 1867.

From the Preface: “Since the author’s discovery of the might of Truth in the treatment of disease as well as of sin, her system has been fully tested and shall not been found wanting; but to reach the heights of Christian Science, man must live in obedience to its divine Principle.”

“We think that we are healed when a disease disappears, though it is liable to reappear; but we are never thoroughly healed until the liability to be ill is removed. So-called mortal mind or the mind of mortals being the remote, predisposing, and the exciting cause of all suffering, the cause of disease must be obliterated through Christ in divine Science, or the so-called physical senses will get the victory. Unless an ill is rightly met and fairly overcome by Truth, the ill is never conquered. If God destroys not sin, sickness, and death, they are not destroyed in the minds of mortals, but seem to this so-called mind to be immortal. What God cannot do, man need not attempt. If God heals not the sick, they are no healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite All-power; but God Truth, Life, Love, does heal the sick through the prayer of the righteous.

Unfortunately for Mary Baker Eddy, despite all her efforts at righteous prayer, it was not enough, as she spent the majority of her life ill.

“She was recorded as having been sick for most of her life: anxious, erratic, doubled-over, her frail body wracked by mysterious intermittent pains. Eddy’s temper tantrums and day terrors alienated her siblings and forced her parents into a lifelong tiptoe. She required constant rocking as a child, and when she was an adult her family commissioned an oversized cradle in which she spent many of her days. Harold Bloom describes Eddy as “a kind of anthology of nineteenth-century nervous ailments.”

“In her later years Eddy apparently became paranoid, believing that 50,000 people were trying to kill her by projecting their evil thoughts. She wrote that if she died it would be due to malicious animal magnetism rather than from natural causes.” (wiki)

One biography claims she had an addiction to morphine. That’s another interesting parallel, considering Bill Wilson, previously mentioned of the social engineering institution known as the Oxford Group and founder of this famed 12-Step Program, used magic mushrooms to find his inner-voice of God, who then cured him of his alcoholism, and dictated his 12-step cure to addiction.

Yes, just like the New Age ‘Bible’ called ‘A Course in Miracles’, the 12-step Program was reportedly ‘channeled.’

According to the Narcotics Anonymous site, 33% of addicts get clean from their 12-Step Program. According to Dr. Lance Dodes, author of “The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science of 12-Step Programs” that figure is less than 10%.

As I skimmed through the Basic Text of Narcotics Anonymous, the parallels to Eddy’s principles are obvious. The addict has an incurable disease over which they will remain powerless for the rest of their lives unless they adhere forever to the Principles. The Principles according to the 12-step site are:

Absolute Honesty
Absolute Purity
Absolute Unselfishness
Absolute Love

Not a tall order in the least, right?!

“NA meetings usually close with a circle of the participants, a group hug and a prayer of some sort. Prayers used to close meetings today include the “we” version of the Serenity Prayer (God, Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”); the Third Step Prayer (“Take my will and my life. Guide me in my recovery. Show me how to live.”) or the “Gratitude Prayer” (“That no addict seeking recovery need ever die . . . My Gratitude speaks when I care and when I share with others the NA way.”) (wiki)

According to Narcotics Anonymous’ “Basic Text” the problem with the addict is the: “inability to deal with life on life’s terms.” He has a terminal disease which can only be dealt with by adhering to the Program.

“We tried drugs and combinations of drugs to cope with a seemingly hostile world. We dreamed of finding a magic formula that would solve our ultimate problem—ourselves.”

In other words, addicts cannot adapt to their environment, and the problem is not the environment, the problem is the addict himself.

According the Prayer, you need the wisdom to know what you cannot change, and what you cannot change is your environment. So it would appear to me we have leagues of folks being brainwashed into adjusting to a hostile environment.

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

If you can’t fit in, it’s your fault, because the society is just fine, and if you can’t see that, that’s your problem. You just don’t get it! Once you are off the drugs, and healed by mind-spirit, you’ll see how great the culture really is. If not, just buy better rose-colored glasses, perhaps.

The Basic Text is peppered with similar mantras as Eddy’s about ‘unconditional love’ and our never-ending battle against our disease and selfless demands like: “We learn that we keep what we have only by giving it away. . . No matter how much we give, there is always another addict seeking help.” Double-speak. Life-long commitment. Collectivism.

I suggest what’s happening is a transferring of addiction, from drugs to the collective and the designers of the system know this explicitly and implicitly. It’s done with a goal in mind . . .(to be continued).

Addiction is addiction, I hope to make that very clear. I can sometimes be a stickler for the meaning of words and there are plenty of words in the English language-culture that are over-used to the point of having lost any sense of a concise and universal meaning.

“Love” is such a word I’ve written about before, and “addiction” falls into this same category.

I’d bet every single person reading this has behaviors or substances they over-use, excessively rely on, desire too often, or maybe even indulge in with a near-religious fervor.

I’m willing to bet this because otherwise why would you be reading the ramblings of a flawed, opinionated, unemployable middle-aged woman who has her own set of proverbial crutches and there are certainly those who would consider their routine use as addictions.

Habitual use of a substance or regularly indulging in preferred behaviors is not the equivalent of addiction. Coffee, sugar, shopping, working, gambling, sex, media, drama—all these are potentially addictive, yet most of us consume them on a regular basis a good part of our lives without becoming addicts.

Because we throw around words like workaholic, shopaholic, chocoholic as well as confuse ‘the habitual user’ with ‘the addict’ we minimize what it really means to be an addict.

When we consider these tendencies to be on some kind of continuum with “teetotaler” on one side and “addict” on the other and “habitual user” somewhere in the middle, this may be descriptive and convenient for the modern mind, but it’s doing a real disservice to truly understanding addicts.

We end up putting that continuum in a hierarchical position, with ‘teetotaler’ at the top of some faulty ladder of excellence and morality. It is a dangerously flawed perception.

I’ve known teetotalers who put their kind at the top of this morality pyramid and to them I say, “Congratulations! You can count yourself among some of the most virulent hypocrites, criminals and blood-thirsty tyrants of all time! Just ask Donald Trump, maker of Trump Vodka. Or Hitler, or Guevara, or John D. Rockefeller . . .

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted
to a profoundly sick society.”

I believe the key to addressing this tragic social situation is simply corrected.

First, stop playing stupid with serious words. True addiction is a matter of life and death.

Second, stop portraying characters in active addiction and those enabling the active addiction of others as heroes of entertainment and sport. Stop voting for them and stop working for them. You know who they are! They are the ones who want MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE! Stop admiring this quality, stop giving it center stage.

Infamous drug-runner in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, Barry Seal,
glamorized by Tom Cruise in American Made.

Barry (TOM CRUISE) and Lucy Seal (SARAH WRIGHT OLSEN) in Universal Pictures’ “American Made.” Cruise . . . in this international escapade based on the outrageous (and real) exploits of a hustler and pilot unexpectedly recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history.

“Bad-ass” Steve Murphy from the popular Netflix series Narcos: “Back then, we were just finding out about the effects of cocaine on the human brain. We didn’t know much, but we knew it was some pretty powerful shit. Cocaine hijacks the pleasure centers in the brain. A rat will choose cocaine over food and water. It would choose cocaine over sleep, over sex… over life itself. The human brain isn’t quite the same as a rodent’s… unless we’re talking about cocaine.”

Especially crucial:
When someone tells you, or shows you, they are an addict, believe them.

I find this post so necessary to write because I have been guilty of all of this myself on multiple occasions. It was arrogant and dismissive and naive on my part and I wish I’d known better; I wish I’d listened better. I wish I’d known what to do, how to really help. I might have even saved a precious life.

It’s Rick that got me to see the fine, but very distinct line in the sand.

I’d often heard the line “addicts can’t stop.” I heard it, but I didn’t understand it.

I know I’m not alone in this because that line is being blurred by influences penetrating the culture, from psychology to media to pharmacy to the self-help, naval-gazing industry keeping folks clueless.

Just because you crave coffee every morning at 7 and a cocktail at 4 does not mean you ‘can’t stop.’

Can’t stop means you drink that first sip of coffee and keep drinking until the moment you find it sounds like a marvelous idea to try a back flip from your balcony. And then that routine sounds like a good idea, day after day, until the moment you go for it.

Rick: “My addiction progressed to the point that getting more was all that mattered. I’d go at any hours, to any sort of location to get ‘served’ – that’s what they call it. It was more important than food. In fact, they call them ‘chefs,’ the guys who are good at cooking powder cocaine into crack.

Redd was one of my dealers, a chef, who later taught me to cook. He died a few years ago. He was blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other, literally.

I would only eat actual food when I got so weak I needed the energy so I could use more. One time when I ran out again that night and called to see if they had more, Redd said his friend had just had a stroke and died after smoking that crack.

My response was something like, ‘Wow, sorry to hear that man. Do you have any more?’

It was to the point that getting more was the only thing I cared about, to the point I moved Redd in with me. That was the beginning of the end—the accelerated downward spiral. The quality of the crack suddenly became much more potent, to the point I would sometimes pass out after taking a hit.”

When I really listen to Rick I hear something I should have understood ages ago.

When we blur the addiction line that should be obvious by minimizing, mis-categorizing, misdiagnosing, dismissing, enabling, aggrandizing and in general remaining ignorant of the addicts’ plights, are we not conveniently and covertly excusing our own bad habits which pale in comparison?

Are we buying into the teetotaler’s faulty morality ladder? Are we actually using the addicts as scapegoats?

And it’s not like that’s not bad enough.

Because it seems very clear that Hollywood wants it this way.

Why would that be?

“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.”
Robin Williams, dead of drug overdose.

The card game called Spoons is a family tradition. We played it from my earliest memory at all Shepard get-togethers, no matter the season or occasion, along with other card games, like Go-Fish and Old Maid, but also on occasion ‘board’ games, like Monopoly and Yatzee.

No cyber world back then, no cell phones or Gameboys or X-Boxes, lord only knows how we managed to plow through the boredom, with only things like cards!

Grandma told us that she was forced by Grandpa to leave the Ice Follies at age 17, where she clearly had an illustrious career in the make, in order to become a respectable wife to him, and honorable mother of his progeny. It was all pretty cool to me, because she was even in the papers, and I had my own aspirations of dancing back then.

Respectable women with families are not show-girls. This was to my grandfather an automatic given.

That’s how I heard the story, when I could first understand it, wearing my favorite t-shirt that summer of about age 11, with a billboard sprawled across my still-flat chest: Anything boys can do girls can do better.

There was this grandfather, highly concerned about the respectability of his wife, and then the one who played Spoons with the family.

These were quite large gatherings, at least compared to what I knew from my mother’s side of the then-divorced families. The game of Spoons is very simple, all the players sit in a circle, 4 cards are dealt to every player, the dealer who passes the contents of the deck to the player to one side attempts to move with a high enough speed as to confuse and disorient the one picking up the discarded cards after him. The goal is 4 of a kind. If achieved, at that moment you silently strategize alone, as there are a line of spoons in the middle of the circle, enough for every player but one. So, once you have 4 of a kind, you grab one, or, you slyly sneak one, or you wait and watch as an opportunist of sorts, or, well that’s about all the strategy I was ever able to garner from this game, besides Grandfather’s.

The strategy my grandfather played was no doubt, by any set of rules, cheating. He would collect a pile of cards next to him, feigning slowness or incompetence, and turn them over in chunks, hoping to collect pairs more quickly, then the 4s, winning the position to select the first spoon. He would play this routine regularly, but we as children would forget, it was only a time or two a year we got together, after all. But after a hand or two each time we’d remember this trick, and rail on grandpa that he was cheating, which only made him and everyone else laugh, to the end result that everyone on the floor would start using (t)his trick.

It’s a very old and simple trick after all. There’s many names for it, but in these parts they call it country dumb, that is, shrewdly playing innocent. The old tricks are the best tricks. When we take even a cursory look at the culture we can see it clearly still works.

There’s a long precedent for this sort of player, most notably from the classic Czech work, The Good Soldier Sveikby Jaroslav Hašek, certainly the predecessor to the Hogan’s Hero’s character called Schultz, celebrated for his classic line, “I know NOTHING!”

There is always a healthy level of doubt as to whether Sveik’s actions are feigned well-executed sabotage or authentic (idiotic) enthusiasm, that’s essential in the classic fool/magician archetype.

“Hasek was a comic genius . . . his message was that war is not merely cruel, unjust and obscene, but ludicrous” Sunday Times

The Good Soldier Svejk is the classic novel of the ‘little man’ fighting officialdom and bureaucracy with the only weapons available to him—passive resistance, subterfuge, native wit and dumb insolence.”

If you were a corporate or military strategist watching our family play Spoons, you might recognize this as a somewhat sophisticated case of sabotage, a sort of coup d’etat, no doubt, because when the patriarch begins to openly cheat and play dumb, you’ve just opened up the entire troupe to the same acceptable level of behavior. Cheating, it seems and many have noted, is contagious. And that’s just how it happened with our family game of Spoons as well. Aunts, uncles, cousins and parents become instant co-conspirators with youngsters of all ages plotting against them, or sometimes, on their behalf.

Is this a ‘good’ lesson to teach children, or a ‘bad’ one?

I thought of this question again when I heard this recent interview with Sarah Westall and Nick Jankel. In it they discuss a bit the importance of “trauma” in a child’s upbringing and the ways this is both under-rated and over-utilized. In my opinion they broach the cutting edge question we now face in the so-called ‘Western modernity’–obviously to bubble-wrap our children is not working, but to go back to old ways of discipline is no longer acceptable either—how can we find the most fertile middle ground?

No doubt as youth we need to be taught to not only deal with, but also to survive and then to thrive within the existing culture, but not to the point we have come now, which is blind obedience, acceptance and acquiescence, generally speaking.

It’s very easy later in life to point fingers at Grandpa and condemn or condone the unhealthy moral principles he was manifesting to his progeny at those cheating moments, especially considering he was clearly loving it.

Did we learn a valuable life lesson, by overcoming a certain level of ‘trauma’? I hope that was his unconscious agenda. Because make no mistake, to learn as a child that your grandfather willingly cheats against you, and the entire family, and then laughs about it, is not an authentic happy moment in a child’s life.

I saw him differently, call it what you want, but ultimately it’s a loss of innocence, if you can bring it to consciousness. Whether conscious or not, Grandpa taught me in that moment about the real world. Whether we are 7 or 17 when that happens, is it better it happens where one has a soft place to fall, or with random strangers in a proverbial strange land?

I don’t know. I want to stress this fact, I really don’t know. This to me is a pivotal social question. Why are we not discussing it at the dinner tables and the board rooms and the political arenas is beyond me.

Is it better to learn your 60 year old grandfather would cheat against your 6 year old nephew, and embrace that as a valuable familial tradition, and then by extension to learn that is how the world actually works?

Or, would you rather learn it when you get blindsided by crooks out to steal your successful business when you finally wake up to reality at age 47?

Could it be that Trump is brilliantly playing this archetype now?

And what about all the shades of critical social gray there might be in-between that our progeny might need to learn? Are we learning how to create a better world with these life lessons, or are we learning only how to successfully play along?

According to a definition on Wiki, I might be a pacifist, considering my lifelong anti-war views: “A pacifist rejects war and believes there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. War, for the pacifist, is always wrong.” In a sense the philosophy is based on the idea that the ends do not justify the means.[6]

I’d agree in general, war is always wrong, and furthermore, it’s a racket.

Still, that does not make me a pacifist, not by a long shot. I do believe there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war, and that the ends do not justify the means. However, as mature, rational individuals sometimes immorality is the only responsible course of action. Simplistic, black and white thinking is the territory of adolescents, where unfortunately far too many adults today seem to be stuck.

Once upon a time in this country there used to be an ‘anti-war’ left. Maybe a few still remember that. Where that led was to a government who simply stopped declaring war. They started calling it ‘spreading democracy’ and ‘fighting terrorism’ and ‘regime change’ instead, and the once resistant left jumped right on board.

I’d suggest that was because the left had never based their policies on principles, they’d just duped a lot of folks into thinking that was the case. Now the left has become so desperate and diabolical that violence is committed by the very act of speaking, with subtle human behaviors suddenly deemed ‘micro-aggressions’ and popular entertainers de-platformed, and even your local weatherman under an illegal federal gag-order to keep you from the truth about Geoengineering and weather warfare. https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/government-implements-illegal-gag-order-on-national-weather-service-and-noaa/

Everyone is #metoo and #offended to a degree of public outrage fit only for a brothel. Sorry, omg, not to say anything bad about brothels, really, I’m sure they have their place in a civilized society and I don’t judge, really, sorry for my stereotypes and bigotry to any and all sex workers who may be reading this, and of course, any of their clients as well, be they legal or illegal, foreign or domestic. My bad, I take it back, I blame this brand of shameless, insensitive faux pas squarely on my really square grandfather, that is, on my mother’s side, just to be clear. Sorry! He was German, so, there you have it.

“Political correctness and the burgeoning movement to outlaw “offensive language” are merely tactics to: preserve groups’ separate identities; foment conflict between them; and ultimately foster their dependence on government authority.”

When confronted with the blatant hypocrisy, or the obvious double-standards and inherent corruption, they continue to perpetuate the charade and they cloak their cognitive dissonance in ready-made slogans provided to them by Empire: Always defer to the Authority, and there is always an Authority.

“I was just following orders.”

“That’s above my pay grade.”

“Let me get my supervisor.”

“The State and its allies are real oppressors who contribute mightily to creating real victims; but what I’m talking about here is growing numbers of people who voluntarily take on the victim-mantle and seek comfort in nests of self-promoting groups who exaggerate and distort their own claims to special status.

The State needs these people. The State wants these people. Increasingly, the State employs these people.”

Drought-Rage?! YES!!! Does he know it’s deliberate?

“If the development of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilizations—or some epochs of civilization—possibly the whole of mankind—have become neurotic?” Sigmund Freud

Again from Jon Rappoport:

“Eventually, if lunatics have their way, every person on planet Earth will be designated a victim. That will be the group of groups.

It won’t matter why and how everyone supposedly turns out to be a victim. The reasons will be forgotten. People will “instinctively” sign on to the agenda.

And the management team running the world will put another check mark on their sheet of objectives:

“Earth is beginning to resemble one giant hospital/mental institution. Break out the champagne.”

There is only one problem. That plan is fraying at the edges. People are waking up and swimming to the surface through layers of deception. They’re returning to themselves. They’re recognizing group-ism for what it is: a meltdown into self-sabotage.

Perhaps you will think this is just a battle of semantics. But, I do not think such battles are futile. Words matter. According to popular theories like Neuro-Linguistic Programming they matter significantly, much more than many of us realize.

But, the appropriate naming of a thing is conditional upon understanding this thing, especially when it is as abstract and ephemeral, as defined and debated, as love is.

Maybe sometime in prehistoric, more intuitive times, this was hardly necessary, but today it is. Since the ‘Positivity movement’ – an orchestrated top-down push by social engineering think-tanks like the Tavistock and Esalen Institutes, Theosophical Society, among many others—love has become a very loaded word in the West. By grand design.

Love is the answer. Love will save the world. Love conquers all. Love the one your with. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yet love is far too loaded a word to make it the salvation of mankind, let alone the multiverse.

This love-pushing is yet another slight of hand by the power structure, and it seems some of most well-versed and well-intentioned in matters of social programming are still falling for this ruse.

Yes, I will name names, of some of my favorites, and boldly so. James Corbett, Ole Dammegard, Patrick Roddie are among those who have recently rekindled this fog of love. These men are working impressively hard to ameliorate the system, but still insisting love is the answer.

These love lovers come from a very long tradition, Martin Luther King preached constantly of love. From the ancient Greeks to Mary Baker Eddy to today’s New Agers who preach incessantly of agape all march right in step with loads of spiritual and even some secular doctrine to boot.

Crossing every musical genre, every soap opera, through environmental and social movements, through philosophers, preachers, psychiatrists, we have been brainwashed and further confused about what this world really needs.

All we need is love? Not by a long shot!

Here’s what I think: You are all terrifically wrong and embarrassingly so. Please allow me to elaborate.

First and foremost, ‘love’ does not translate well, even among Western languages. ‘Te quiero’ the expression most used in Spanish for ‘I love you’ actually translates better as ‘I want you.’ In French the verb for love is “aimer” translated both as ‘to like’ and ‘to love.’

Love does not translate well through time and space either, it evolves differently over time, place and circumstance. There are 4 kinds of love according to the Bible, 8 according to the ancient Greeks, 7 according to Psychology Today magazine.

Which type is it, I wonder, do we expect to work to solve the world’s ills?

There is the unrequited love of the troubadours, the erotic love equated with infatuation, platonic love, familiar love, and I could go on. And on! A single word with so many variables is a really bad idea for slogans and songs about saving the world. Or a really good one, if you want to remain pathetically ineffective.

Everyone understands love, they insist. We’ve all felt love, they assure us. But that too is a big fat lie. Unfortunately, there are many lonely souls in the world who do not understand love at all and who haven’t any capacity to either receive love, or to give it.

Love is passive, remarkably so. Love is a word over-used to the point of abuse and even contains what most of us today consider malevolent, as in the high form of love according to the ancient Greeks, pederasty, the love between a man and an adolescent boy. We must of course mention the unmentionable as well, in terms of love, that disgusting master of headlines and hatred, pedophilia, the ‘love’ of prepubescent children.

Clearly folks, the answer is not love, not familial love, or romantic love, or sexual love, or cosmic love, or love of man, freedom, god, king or country.

The answer is simply not, in any way, shape, or form, love!

The answer is care.

Care takes out the selfishness and passivity inherent in love. A universal word in the way love never will or can be. It is understood across borders and across generations. Care is independent of love’s baser quality of desire, many times we must care whether we desire it or not.

We care for, we care about, we care to, or not to. Care is a very active word, it embodies and requires action.

Give it a try, just to test my hypothesis. Next time you are inclined to use the word ‘love’ try ‘care’ instead. Instead of saying ‘I love nature’ say “I care about nature.”

Instead of saying “I love that child” say “I care for that child.”

It works especially well with my greatest pet peeve with the word—instead of saying ‘Love your enemy’ try ‘Care about your enemy.’

Does that not feel more right?

Because, I do! I can say that with full honesty and integrity—I care about my enemy. I care what he’s doing so I might prevent it. I care what he thinks, what he says, how he says it, where he goes, in fact, I care about every move he makes, so that I can triumph over him.

There is nothing triumphant about loving your enemy, it’s the equivalent of surrendering to him, because authentic love requires surrender, and everything else is just paying lip-service to love.

Food for thought: Let’s try some songs and preaches and speeches about care for a change.

There is no greater luxury than time. When we give our time we are giving our energy, our single most precious resource as individuals. I wish I’d understood that better far sooner in life.

I can’t turn back the clock to make up for that, but I can make certain to never sell my time so cheaply again. I see now how I, and a good many more, confused the game with reality. It would also seem, in terms of numbers and the obvious direction culture is heading, that this confusion is getting far worse.

I grew up in a fantasy-based reality, where, as I said in part 1, the artificial, man-made construct of time had long since replaced not only my own internal clock, but the clock of nature as well. I spent an enormous amount of time at school, much of that which I now consider wasted. I spent a good deal of my youth watching television and reading fiction. I spent a fair amount of time in young adulthood experimenting with altered states of consciousness, exploring a bit of the world and a bit of my own mind. That was actually loads of fun, which I cannot regret anymore than I could have continued.

Now in middle age I have a new goal and agenda centered on my own re-education. This to me is reclaiming time and I do it not out of loneliness or boredom, nor to indoctrinate others, nor in the aim of becoming an authority figure, nor even to make money—all of which I have been repeatedly accused and none of which mean anything to me in these pursuits. I do it because it needs to be done, according to the small, still voice of Self.

That I should have the occasion now to do this necessary work fills me with gratitude and even awe. As an unexpected rainbow might stop one in her tracks, or make her hurry back for the camera, I gaze with gratitude at the long empty hours in front of me each morning, ready and waiting to be filled with my heart’s greatest longings: extended walks in the woods with the dogs; spoiling the puppies as much as I dare; answering the phone, or not answering it; writing a blog post, or not; puttering in the garden; cooking something delicious, even if just for me and the critters.

Beyond nature as my companion, I also have many other teachers, ironically the majority of them brought to me by another fantasy-based reality: cyberspace.

From the viewpoint of some friends still enthralled with the fantasy-based reality matrix in which they reside, they find this disturbing. You will be alone on Thanksgiving? And Christmas? And you welcome this? Some even try to label this ‘depression’ or a ‘crisis’ of mid-life. What about family, friends, shopping?! I try to assure them: “No, really, I care not a hoot for the Black Friday specials, or Christmas gifts.” And as for friends and family, they know exactly where to find me.

This Thanksgiving I wish to express my deepest gratitude to he who is making this luxury of time possible, that is Hubby, whose absence and employment are both a gift and a curse. Not a day goes by where I do not marvel at the journey we’ve made together and where it has brought us. I could’ve never predicted it nor imagine how suited to me it could become.

Me, a cheese-maker? Didn’t see that comin’!

I also want to show my very sincere gratitude to those out in the cyber-world making my re-education easier, more accessible, more entertaining and thought-provoking than it otherwise could have been. These individuals have gone to such incredible lengths to offer their great contributions to knowledge and humanity, not only against the current paradigm, but as serious matters of conscience, and using the most innovative gifts of modern technology available to them. For this modeling I am unreservedly impressed and inspired.

Dane Wigington at Geoengineering Watch: a powerful and tireless voice against geoengineering and for a more responsible relationship by humans with our environment. I would be hard-pressed to find a more consistent and honorable advocate for nature and sanity.

Alex Tsakaris at Skeptico, where have you been all my life?! I just found his site last month. And after the very long series of posts where I was attempting to better understand the nature and frauds of science, I now finally have a solid guide through the territory that most inspires me, expressed in his tagline: “intelligent discussion on science and spirituality.” I’m now a happy member on his forum site after only one previous miserably failed attempt in the world of forums.

Still a favorite after all these years, thank you James! A gifted writer who uses his many talents in devotion to truth–my favorite shows being those in which he demonstrate his extraordinary wit and creativity.

I have recently praised the work of Michael Tsarion and David Whitehead at Unslaved.com, but I would be remiss not to mention them again now. Tsarion gets a baffling amount of criticism, but I’ve found his work, especially on the Tarot, to be invaluable. Now that he has teamed with Whitehead he is grounding into the topics I find most necessary today–personally, politically, intellectually, spiritually, physically. There is an uncanny synthesis in their shows together, maybe based in the inter-generational aspect of it, and that they so often draw from history yet underscore its continued relevance, but definitely in the shared vision that what’s required to move forward and make a better world has been right under our noses and at our fingertips all along. I have learned an enormous amount from them about the nature of evil and the capacities required to usurp it. Thank you, gentlemen, oh how the world needs you now!

Another one I must thank is Crrow777. While definitely not for the faint of heart, they are very much on the cutting edge and I can’t help but to respect that. They are now battling censorship and taking it on like true spiritual warriors. For those ready for a heavy dose of deconstruction, take a deep dive into their waters!

Jon Rappaport (nomorefakenews) I re-blog fairly regularly as he has my great respect as another man of honor with an inspiring dedication to, and passion for, truth. A veteran journalist, one could spend considerable time learning from his vast expanse of past and present work.

Finally, I want to take a deep bow to the greatest teacher by far that I’ve ever known, and will ever know, and which has taken me far too long to find: Nature.

It is in you my reality is centered and my energy devoted for the rest of my luxurious, reclaimed time in your exquisite home.

Me 3rd from left with friends in front of the Prague Astronomical Orloy, 1995

I lived for decades at the command of Time, Inc. That’s how I understand it after nearly a decade now adjusting to the rhythm of nature. Before that I’d lived like most others in the post-industrial world with a calendar that was invented not by nature but by men. As a young student bells sent me scurrying from one room to another along with the rest of my peers.

I didn’t like it even then, didn’t understand it, though I was always curious and loved learning. But as I had known nothing else, as a university student I thought it a fantastic improvement to be free to walk from building to building based on my watch, free-range and bell-free.

I thought Time, Inc. was ingenious as it got me on the planes and trains and kept me punctual for my various social roles as a student, a teacher, a patient, a shopper, a volunteer, and the various other obligations of ‘she who is participating.’ The clock got me to the concerts on time.

“Get in the game!” was the advice from all directions. I did sometimes question this word, ‘the game.’ Is that what this is?

I have never been a big player of games; I don’t particularly like them. At one point it occurred to me, so, if this really is a game, I can choose whether or not to play?

So, slowly, little by little, I began to remove myself from the game. Like all games the ones who’ve created the game make the rules. It is only a one who follows the rules who wins the game. You may scoff at this analogy now and say, but there’s so much corruption and crime and it clearly pays, so it’s actually breaking the rules which gets one ahead. If this is what you are thinking, you haven’t yet understood the game. The game is working as it is meant to function.

I figured not only did I not make the rules of the game, I don’t particularly like it and I started to resent all the advice that insisted I continue playing it. Seems logical enough that you can’t win a game if you don’t like playing it. Or, maybe you can, but then you’d be winning just to win and not because you enjoyed playing. Not really my style.

Notice I have now started five paragraphs with “I.” I do this quite deliberately.

“I” is who I know, not you, not we, not them. To know oneself is not to know all men and this is part of the on-going collectivist brainwashing flooding the culture. We are not all one. We are not all in this together. We are not all created equal. In fact, we should, in my opinion, stop striving for equality altogether. It’s not working.

I admit, I was once one who said such things as this on my first website nearly 20 years ago: “Once we have leveled the playing field in education around the globe communication will flourish and then we can call ourselves One World.”

I had drunk the Kool-Aid. I really believed this then. I was too young and optimistic to understand that ‘leveling the field’ meant leveling it to the least common denominator, not the greatest. I did not understand Globalism at all and thought ‘One World’ sounded pretty awesome and fun.

I was a card-caring member of Time, Inc.

I remember one night on the exquisite Old Town Square in the Czech Republic gazing with a large group of tourists many an evening at the famed Prague Orloj, a working astronomical clock 600 years old. It was one of my favorite spots in the city, a city where I was lucky enough to live before the latest great invasion of mass tourism.

I remember what the Charles Bridge looked like at night in winter with only a handful of locals walking over it. Back then there was a free puppet show behind a makeshift stand under the bridge where I sat on the ground with a dozen children listening to them laugh, which was making me laugh. That was 1989. I have photos somewhere in a box that are mostly blurry or dark, sometimes in black and white, because that was the only film I could find there to buy.

Fast forward a decade, then two, and you can barely get over the bridge and it has become a sort of tourist marketplace. That pesky Progress at work again.

I’m not bitter, though I know I sound that way sometimes. I still have my memories, one of the few states which has remained, at least in part, at least for now, beyond Time, Inc.

So it was one night, as I said, on the exquisite Old Town Square gazing with a large group of tourists (not quite this large!) waiting for the Apostles on the clock to do their nightly dance, when an English-speaking drunken youth passes between the clock and the upward gazers, his back to the crowd, raises his arms in worship and slurs at the top of his lungs as it begins to chime on the hour, “Oh my God! Oh my God! OHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!” Falling to his knees theatrically then, to the astonishment and awkward chuckles and eye rolls from the crowd.

I laughed at the time, mostly at the audacity of it. Now I wonder if that sauced joker realized how genius his move actually was. And how memorable.